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Japan Steps Up Pressure on North Korea

TOKYO, July 10 — Japan stepped up the pressure on North Korea today over last week’s missile tests, as a top government spokesman said the country should consider whether its Constitution would allow pre-emptive military strikes.

Japan has reacted more strongly than other countries in the region to North Korea’s missile tests. Public opinion here was already simmering in outrage over past abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korea and by a previous test launch eight years ago that sent a missile sailing over Japan’s main island.

Today, Japanese officials made some of their most forceful comments yet. Shinzo Abe, the chief cabinet secretary and leading government spokesman, said that Japan needed to consider whether the nation’s pacifist Constitution would allow pre-emptive attacks on North Korean missile sites as an act of self-defense.

“If we accept that there is no other option to prevent a missile attack,” he told reporters, “there is an argument that attacking the missile bases would be within the legal right of self-defense. I think we need to examine this from the perspective of defending the Japanese people and nation.”

Mr. Abe’s comments came a day after the head of Japan’s defense agency, Fukushiro Nukaga, said during a television talk show that Japan should consider pre-emptive strikes “if an enemy country definitely has a way of attacking Japan and has its finger on the trigger.”

Japanese officials said they will keep pressing for punitive United Nations sanctions against North Korea, despite the likelihood of a Chinese veto and criticism from South Korea that Japan was taking too hard a stance. The rift between Japan and some of its Asian neighbors has complicated the efforts of Christopher Hill, the top American envoy on North Korea, who arrived in Tokyo today from Seoul on a tour to coordinate a unified response to the tests.

China, which has favored a negotiated resolution without sanctions, sent Wu Dawei, a vice minister of foreign affairs, today to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. His mission is to find a way to restart stalled six-nation talks on North Korea’s weapons programs, involving the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia as well as China and North Korea. The North walked out of those talks in September.

It is rare for Japanese leaders to speak so openly about the use of military force, given the bitter memories of Japan’s brutal wartime march through Asia in the 1930’s and 1940’s and its preemptive strike on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Photo

Shinzo Abe, the chief cabinet secretary and leading government spokesman, speaking today in Tokyo.Credit
Toru Hanai/Reuters

But Mr. Abe, the front-runner to replace Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who is scheduled to step down in September, has been a leading voice among conservatives calling for a revision of the Constitution to allow Japan to build fully fledged armed forces.

The Constitution, written by American occupiers after World War II, prohibits Japan from using military force to settle disputes, though for decades it has been interpreted by the government as allowing the country to defend itself with force.

Analysts said that Tokyo now lacks both the capability and the political will to attack North Korea. But in recent years, government officials have begun openly discussing whether Japan should add more offensively-oriented weapons, like as air- and sea-launched cruise missiles, to its arsenal.

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Analysts said Mr. Abe’s comments today were intended as a warning to North Korea’s reclusive communist regime. But they said the main target may have been Japanese domestic public opinion, as Mr. Abe tries to establish an image as a strong leader to replace the popular Mr. Koizumi.

Analysts also said that conservatives like Mr. Abe were seizing on the missiles tests in the hope that public anger would translate into support for revising the Constitution. A public opinion poll released Saturday by Japan’s Kyodo News agency showed that 80.7 percent of respondents favored sanctions against North Korea, and 87 percent felt anxiety over the missile firings.

“The public thinks Japan needs to be able to respond to this kind of threat,” said Tadasu Kumagai, a private military analyst who has written several books on regional security. “This is a chance for Mr. Abe and others to get public support for building a regular military.”

The strident language in Tokyo threw into sharp relief the differing responses to the missile launches by two of Washington’s longstanding allies in the region, Japan and South Korea. Seoul has tended to play down the significance of the tests; on Sunday, the South Korean president, Roh Moo Hyun, criticized Japan for making a “fuss” over the launches.

On Monday, Mr. Abe fired back, telling a press conference that it was “regrettable that South Korea would use such an expression.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Hill, the American envoy, met today in Tokyo with Japan’s foreign minister, Taro Aso. During the meeting, Mr. Hill praised Japan’s “leadership” in the United Nations on the missile issue and told Mr. Aso that his country had America’s full support, according to a statement from Japan’s foreign ministry. Mr. Hill has already visited China and South Korea on his trip to the region.

“We want to make it very clear that we all speak in one voice on this provocative action by the North Koreans,” he told reporters. “We want to make it clear to North Korea that what it did was really unacceptable.”